GM Names Names, Suspends Two Engineers Over Ignition-Switch Safety

cartechboy (2660665) writes "GM said it has placed two engineers on paid leave in connection with its massive recall probe of 2 million vehicles. Now, GM is asking NASA to advise on whether those cars are safe to drive even with the ignition key alone. Significantly, individual engineers now have their names in print and face a raft of inquiries what they did or didn't know, did or didn't do, and when. A vulnerability for GM: One engineer may have tried to re-engineer the faulty ignition switch without changing the part number—an unheard-of practice in the industry. Is it a good thing that people who engineer for a living can now get their names on national news for parts designed 10 years ago? The next time your mail goes down, should we know the name of the guy whose code flaw may have caused that?"

Comments

Hero ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What follows is my baseless personal opinion based only on what I see at similar businesses ---
The engineer that changed the part without changing the part number and without management knowing intentionally did it behind their back because management wouldn't let him make the change. Everyone knew about the problem. Management knew changing the part was akin to admitting the fault. The engineer did it on his own to save lives - company be damned. And he kept the part number the same so that no one would know.

Re:Hero ?

[pla]

Sure, management wouldn't let him make the change and that is bad.

With this going so high that congress dragged the CEO in to lie to them that this involved anything more than "cheaper to let you die", by naming these two engineers, GM has just given them the power to completely ruin the company.

"We tried to do the right thing and management thwarted us at every turn". Done in one, the CEO just perjured herself before congress, and the class action liability suits put GM (back) into bankruptcy (where they belong).

Unfortunately in this case, engineers tend to have too strong of a "boyscout" streak in them, and the ones implicated here will probably just do their best to ignore the fact that GM just threw them under the bus for following orders.

Or put another way - I don't work in an industry that seriously puts people's lives in danger, and legal would goose-step me out of the goddamned building before they let me do something like GM claims these two engineers did "on their own". So an entire multinational supply and manufacturing chain of command just quietly went along with the whims of two peons that massively violated protocol? Bullshit.

Re:Hero ?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a professionally licensed design engineer, we have a responsibility to the public in general. These two engineers, once the problem had been identified and middle management was preventing the fix from being implemented, should have sent an email to the CEO and copied the entire company mailing list highlighting the potential liability and risk of death and great bodily harm. I guarantee it would have been fixed, and a bunch of jackass middle management would have been out on their asses. If the warning was still ignored, the next stop is the press. They may or may not have lost their jobs, or they may have gotten a promotion, but either is far better than where they are now.

Engineers in general are very conscientious as we have one of very few professions where our work makes us personally liable under the law and that liability cannot be transferred to a corporation (although the corporation may also be liable, and typically have deeper pockets.) This is one reason why, although spectacular (i.e. the Challenger shuttle explosion) it is very rare that middle management succeeds in hushing any serious safety flaws known to the engineers. As an engineer I would much rather be out of a job than on the hook for wrongful death, legally or morally. As for my next employer, if they are worth working for, they know the laws and know that engineers work for them but have a greater responsibility to society.

I used to work at GM.

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically, OnStar.

I can remember one of the development groups there "discovering" Agile, and immediately trying to patent the crap out of every process they could. Specifically, they were patenting how they made "new" processes to make Agile work with their awful SDP-21 development process (waterfall)..... by putting multiple sprints inside of the waterfall.

The place was soul sucking, conformity was desperately sought in all people, and management was desperate to throw underlings under the bus in order to save their own $160,000/year jobs (the talent for which they never really possessed).

You know... sort of like what is happening to these two engineers.

Re:Whew!

[Grishnakh]

Better yet, these people get to be super rich AND immune from any consequences for their mistakes and misdeeds, however the engineers working for them, who make middle-class salaries at best (and far less than doctors), are somehow expected to have "ethical standards" and are the first to be blamed when something goes wrong that was really because of a management decision.

Re:changing part without changing number is common

[pipingguy]

I've seen cock-ups like this happen before. Detailed fabrication drawings are auto-generated paper documents (paper, because each one must be signed and stamped by the stress engineer and signed by the checker and because paper is easier to handle by the fabrication shop and remains the copy of record). Sometimes, but rarely, a minor change is made in the 3D model and a new physical drawing is not printed and sent through the document process. In this case, the 3D model is correct but the detailed drawing is not. Or the reverse can happen; the detailed drawing is manually edited (say, under pressure to meet a deadline, with the intent to update the model as soon as the rush is over - then someone forgets) leaving the model incorrect.